General Dynamics Marine Systems Selects CATWEB as Portal for Enterprise Product Data Visualization

Business Wire, April 15, 1999

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 1999--

Solutions offer access to CAD and proprietary PDM data via the

Web

Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY) announced today that General Dynamics Marine Systems (GDMS) has chosen CATWEB Solutions to provide enterprise-wide visualization for its Integrated Product Data Environment (IPDE). CATWEB Solutions, written in Java, are intuitive, rapid and low priced, providing Web access to native product data on a simple office PC.

Throughout the product life cycle, CATWEB offers employees across the extensive General Dynamics enterprise, approximately 3,000 users, access to the total product definition of the VIRGINIA Class, the next generation attack submarine for the US Navy.

CATWEB, implemented at General Dynamics Marine Systems since March 15, 1999, enables users from all disciplines - planning, life cycle support, engineering and manufacturing - to leverage the investment made in 3D product models.

In the initial implementation, CATWEB facilitates shipyard construction and planning by providing the necessary flexibility to display CAD models directly at the desktop, while also providing access to all the configured bills of materials. Design managers and production support teams can also monitor the progress on a day to day basis thanks to CATWEB. This significantly enhances the ability of multiple organizations to collaborate on a single program.

CATWEB has been designed to accept data from different sources and present it to the user in an "all-in-one" enterprise product viewer portal with secured access. It uses the extensibility of object technology to accept data from different Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Product Data Management (PDM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) and legacy systems. CATWEB allows the viewing of models, documents, images, drawings and all the configured bills of materials (C1BOM) as well as multiple configured BOM (CnBOM).

"We are very excited to be deploying CATWEB into production. Dassault Systemes' Enterprise Visualization solution is directly in line with the General Dynamics Marine Systems' IPDE objective of providing enhanced product data access throughout the enterprise. I see this approach as a fundamental building block to achieving further cost and cycle time improvements within GDMS, or any industry. This success demonstrates that with the support of our technology partners, Dassault Systemes, Computer Sciences Corporation and IBM, GDMS is able to continue the evolution of its world class IPDE implementation," explains Don Slawski, Program Manager, General Dynamics Marine Systems IPDE.

"We are extremely pleased with the standard visualization and product explorer capabilities, but more importantly, we are pleased with how easy it is to extend the CATWEB infrastructure to meet the needs of our clients. The remote viewer capabilities allow us to centralize visualization CPU and memory requirements at the server level, providing unprecedented visualization capability from a PC client. CATWEB's infrastructure allows us to extend the visualization capabilities using Java and CORBA technologies to access CAD, PDM and legacy data managed within the GDMS IPDE," explains Christine Hendrick, Computer Sciences Corporation, Program Manager, IPDE Applications Development.

"Areas within a company such as marketing, sales, support, quality assurance, manufacturing and assembly all have unique needs for product information. Using CATWEB, each member of the extended enterprise can use their favorite Web browser to access all related product data information and become more productive. CATWEB's customers around the globe will benefit from an industry-leading Web combination of product data visualization, communication, analysis and simulation tools," said Arnaud Ribadeau Dumas, Director of CATWEB Solutions, Dassault Systemes. "General Dynamics Marine Systems and Computer Sciences Corporation people share our vision of the digital enterprise and we would like to thank them for their unique cooperation with our development teams."

CATWEB products are intended for mechanical engineering, manufacturing & operations companies who are implementing Intranet/Internet capabilities to exploit e-business in their product information pipelines. These e-business strategies support real process improvement by making engineering data available to non-engineering staff across the extended enterprise.

Dassault Systemes S.A. is a leading software developer for the CAD/CAM/CAE/PDM II market providing users with solutions for their product development needs. CATIA-CADAM Solutions and DENEB Solutions enable total simulation of product creation. SolidWorks, a wholly owned subsidiary, offers design-oriented, software solutions based on Windows. With Java-based CATWEB e-business tools, everyone can exploit engineering data over the Web. ENOVIA PDM II Solutions deliver a new multi-CAD collaborative and innovative environment for the virtual product and process modeling and management across the extended enterprise. The customer base comprises over 13,000 CATIA-CADAM and 9,500 SolidWorks customers.